samedi 17 août 2013

Zé and the Salomé brothers

If you enjoy Portuguese music, you certainly know two of the Salomé Brothers, Vitorino and Janita. Their elder - and very sympathetic - brother Zé (below in April 2011) is also a musician and has a watch shop next to the Plátano Café in Redondo. If you are lucky (as here in August 2013, with Vitorino and one of the youngest members of the "clan" at the left of Zé), you may meet one of Zé's youngest brothers in the shop. I don't know Vitorino's work that well. But Janita's music is wonderful and I've been listening to it for years. In one of his great albums, Vozes do Sul, he revisits the Cante Alentejano, with superb versions of e.g. "Ao romper da bela aurora" or "Menina Florentina". You should also check "Tardes de Casablanca" on the A cantar ao Sol album and the more recent "fragmentos". And if you feel like digging deeper into popular Portuguese music, the work of the corsican ethnomusicologist Michel Giacometti, O Povo que Canta, is a definite must!